The present disclosure relates generally to processing of image data for an electronic display and, more particularly, to dynamic dithering.
This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present techniques, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present disclosure. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Many electronic displays, particularly those associated with portable electronic devices, may provide a relatively lower bit-depth than may be used internally by an associated electronic device. For example, an electronic device may operate on image data of 10 bits, but its associated electronic display may only be capable of displaying image data of 6 bits. To obtain lower-bit-depth image data from higher-bit-depth image data, an electronic device typically may not simply discard the least significant bits of the relatively higher-bit-depth image data, as doing so could result in a loss of image information. Instead, the electronic device may use dithering to obtain lower-bit-depth image data, as dithering may conserve the information contained in the least significant bits by distributing this information to other nearby pixels during image processing.
Generally speaking, dithered image data may be pleasing to the eye and may represent a good approximation of the original higher bit-depth image data. Indeed, when certain dithering techniques (e.g., Floyd-Steinberg dithering) are used on certain image data (e.g., photographic images or noisy image data), the resulting dithered image data may be difficult to distinguish from the original higher bit-depth image data. However, when these dithering techniques are employed with certain other image data (e.g., non-noisy or relatively uniform image data), the resulting dithered image data may sometimes contain unsightly artifacts, which may appear like grains of sand in the dithered image.